


All Across the Poppy Fields

by PinkLady80



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, American Civil War, M/M, World War I, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26074684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkLady80/pseuds/PinkLady80
Summary: He’s christened Matthew Austin, born in Alta California on September 17, 1843.  His father is an officer in the United States Army Corp of Topographical Engineers, his mother a daughter of the regional governor.  He has an older sister and a younger sister.
Relationships: Mitch Marner/Auston Matthews
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	All Across the Poppy Fields

**Author's Note:**

> In Flanders fields the poppies blow  
> Between the crosses, row on row,  
> That mark our place; and in the sky  
> The larks, still bravely singing, fly  
> Scarce heard amid the guns below.
> 
> We are the Dead. Short days ago  
> We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,  
> Loved and were loved, and now we lie  
> In Flanders fields.
> 
> Take up our quarrel with the foe:  
> To you from failing hands we throw  
> The torch; be yours to hold it high.  
> If ye break faith with us who die  
> We shall not sleep, though poppies grow  
> In Flanders fields.
> 
> “In Flanders Fields”  
> Written by Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae  
> Originally published: December 8, 1915

He’s christened Matthew Austin, born in Alta California on September 17, 1843. His father is an officer in the United States Army Corp of Topographical Engineers, his mother a daughter of the regional governor. He has an older sister and a younger sister.

His father wants him to follow in his footsteps, become an engineer, but Matthew dreams of being a Cavalry officer. He’s met companies when they’ve stopped by his house on their way north to Oregon and Washington. He loves their dashing uniforms and beautifully groomed horses.

He can’t remember his first time riding, but he would rather be on a horse than do anything else. He remembers his first pony and the feeling of moving faster than he could run.

Riding is a good way to torment his sisters. Once he jumps his horse over both of them and laughs when they chase him around the yard, yelling. 

As punishment, his mother takes his horse away for a week, confining him to the little room she uses when she gives her children their lessons. She makes him write letters of apology for scaring them, looming over to correct his penmanship. His father rescues him and they take long hikes together where he quizzes Matthew about plants and mathematics.

He loves the long hours spent with his father and the exasperated looks his mother gives him when they return home. She threatens to put a stone on Matthew’s head; he won’t need such an enormous horse if he never grows taller than her.

His schooling is unconventional but solid and he’s not lagging behind his classmates when he and his father take the stage-coach east in 1855 so Matthew can continue his education at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.

The school is a world away from life with his family. Time in the classroom is highly regimented and Matthew’s days are filled with science, drawing, calculus, rhetoric, French, and boxing.

New York is much colder than home and Matthew spends his first winter at West Point convinced he’ll never be warm again. The dorms are cold even with fires burning day and night. In the classroom, his ink freezes. No one wants to bathe and only the threat of demerit points motivates the boys to haul the heavy tub outside to fill with snow before bringing it in to melt in front of the fire.

But winter also means hockey. His friends introduced him to the game that first winter and Matthew falls in love. He loves the strategy, loves charging the net and unfortunate soul who drew the short straw for net-minder.

He feels like a bird in flight.

  
  


_**Civil War** _

Matthew graduates West Point a Second Lieutenant just as war breaks out, standing 6th of 46 cadets.

His parents had made plans to come for his graduation, but the need to get men to the front cancels the ceremony. Matthew hasn’t seen his family in six years, there was never enough time off between terms to justify the expense. 

He has to take a walk so his fellow cadets won’t see his anger and disappointment. Maybe the war will be short. Otherwise, he hopes he’ll be allowed some leave.

He scored quite high in all his mathematics exams, and the Army immediately orders him to St Louis where Captain Phillip Sheridan is conducting an audit. His fellow cadets, many who are joining fighting regiments, mock his assignment. Matthew doesn’t understand the delay. His skills are excellent and he wants to help hold the country he loves together.

He doesn’t see any fighting until January 1862 and that’s where Matthew meets Billy, a tall palomino with a calm disposition and soft eyes, when he selects him from the horse pool just before the Battle of Pea Ridge.

The battle lasts two days and President Lincoln’s men suffer 1300 dead, missing, or wounded. Matthew discovers that the lull of night is just as bad as the battle itself. During the night, he hears the moans and cries of wounded and dying men and the horrific sounds coming from the surgery tents.

He wants to hide under his bedroll, block out the sounds of pain. He has his first nightmare that night and takes no comfort knowing he isn’t the only one.

The war drags on and Matthew is at Corinth for the siege and at the Battle of Booneville. He can’t get the smell of blood and death out of his nose. After the Battle of Chickamauga and the Chattanooga Campaign, Matthew just wants to go home, be hugged by his mother. There isn’t any glamorous or exciting about a war.

Matthew shoots his first deserter on January 1, 1863 during the Battle of Stones River when the man tries to steal Billy (As a Cavalry officer, Billy is his first concern. The only peace Matthew finds is removing the saddle and rubbing Billy down every night. He’s sure horses are the only living things on the battlefield that still have a heart. Billy’s eyes are always trusting regardless of how bad the fighting has been.). He doesn’t feel bad about doing it.

He writes hundreds of letters home. Mail to and from California is slow and he’s always afraid one might be might not be delivered because of an Indian attack or bad weather.

He had never been a faithful letter-writer at school, sometimes going a month without responding to his mother’s weekly updates on the health of the family or the new young man courting his older sister. Now, her letters are the most precious things in his satchel. He rereads them in the evenings after days when the fighting has been particularly bloody.

Some of the men he’s fighting beside are from the states in rebellion, torn between loyalty to their family and loyalty to their country. They don’t receive any letters. Matthew can’t imagine what that feels like, being separated from one’s family in such a definitive way.

An Army photographer is on site the day of his promotion to Captain and he sends a picture of himself astride Billy back to his family. His mother’s reply comes six months later saying he looks just as handsome as his father and that his older sister’s wedding had been beautiful (Matthew had been denied leave because California was too far away. The Army had paid almost $8.00 for him to send a telegram informing his family.).

  
  


_**The Battle of The Wilderness** _

Movement through the trees draws Matthew away from his campfire the night of May 6, 1864.

It’s probably just a spy or would-be thief who can be scared away or captured. The thick woods had hampered the day’s fighting and Matthew is not prepared when he’s ambushed by a figure in a ratty coat and hat.

The only thing he knows is pain. He can’t tell where it started and it doesn’t seem to be stopping. His whole body feels like it’s on fire; he’s sure his bones are melting.

He doesn’t know how long he screams but suddenly his vision is filled with familiar faces holding lanterns. Someone puts a stick in his mouth, telling him to bite down when it hurts.

He passes out before the stretcher arrives.

When Matthew wakes, there’s a man folded into a chair next to his bed. His hair is dark and his face is gaunt but his eyes are steady. Matthew almost falls out of bed in his haste to salute. It’s Abraham Lincoln, Matthew’s Commander-in-Chief, the 16th President of the United States of America.

The President informs Matthew that he was attacked and Changed. It all sounds so ridiculous, like something out of a gothic novel from Europe. Matthew wants to laugh.

But the President isn’t laughing. He tells him there are two choices. He can leave the United States Army as a deserter, and return home to explain what happened to his mother and father, or he can continue his service. The Army would add his name to the long lists of men killed in action and notify his family of his honorable death.

The President gives Matthew two days to make his choice, saying Matthew’s father is still highly respected and the Army still wants Matthew in their ranks. He’s a good soldier and does the uniform justice.

Desertion is one of the most dishonorable acts a soldier can commit, to leave your brothers-in-arms to fight and die while you save your own skin is unconscionable. If he’s branded a deserter, his parents will be notified. What would happen to them? Would they be shunned? Could his younger sister still find a worthy husband?

There is no choice.

But why did this happen to him? Matthew doesn’t understand. He must have been a bad son for God to take away his family so cruelly.

The day before a chaplain is scheduled to collect Matthew’s belongings from the hospital so they can be returned personally to his parents, he writes one last letter, dated the day before his death.

He stays up all night drafting it, wasting paper and ink because of the tears that keep smudging his words.

Matthew spends the rest of the war running a supply depot on the Illinois side of the Ohio River. He feels hollowed out; numb to everything except the movement of supplies and the movement of the Kentuckians across the river trying to disrupt the distribution of goods from Chicago to the frontlines.

After the war, the Army sends Matthew to Highland Falls, New York as a clerk at the Veterans and Federal Employees Bank, or just The Bank. The Bank’s only clients are like Matthew, people the Army needs to pay but would like to keep quiet about their existence and avoid Congressional oversight. 

It’s housed in a nondescript two-story building and only the plaque next to the door and bars over the windows give away what’s inside. The first floor is the bank itself while the second floor houses the 15 military clerks who run it.

Matthew appreciates the quiet predictability of the bank after the chaos of war. He’s on his stool by 8am, writing out pension checks until the armored coach from Washington DC arrives between 9-9:30 with the day’s deposit and updates to the payrolls (It’s a five-day trip if the roads aren’t muddy or icy.). The bank is open for member business from 10am-3pm, and between 3-6pm, Matthew balances his ledgers and makes salary deposits.

On Saturday afternoons and Sundays, the clerks don’t have bank responsibilities and they are free to do what they like, though they do rotate who stays behind to watch for incoming telegrams. 

Matthew doesn’t mind when it’s his turn for telegram duty. He needs the time away from the other clerks. He likes them well enough, but mourning is a solitary endeavor and sometimes their exuberance is too much.

In the summer, they play long games of baseball and some court the pretty girls in town. Billy is still handsome and as good a mount in peacetime as he was in wartime; many of Matthew’s friends borrow him to go riding with the girls they’re walking out with. 

The short winter days are spent on the pond behind the bank. They play four teams of three with one man out keeping score and a second ensuring they don’t break each other.

The pain that was numbed during the war is sharpened in peacetime and Matthew misses his family like he would miss a limb. He tries to fill the gaping hole by going to church on Sunday mornings. He’s sure his mother would approve. It’s not the same, the words and rituals are wrong, but it’s as close as he can get. 

He watches the stars in the evenings. It doesn’t matter if it’s the sky over New York or California, everyone sees the same stars.

He can’t fall asleep with his back to his family; he hasn’t abandoned them. He still loves them. His pension ensures that his parents will live comfortably for the rest of their lives.

The most exciting thing that happens during Matthew’s time at The Bank is in 1895 when the clerks pool their money and buy a gramophone for the lobby. This gets a frown from their Commanding Officer, a Colonel with serious expression who has probably been in banking since Jesus chased the money changers out of the temples, but everyone can hear his boots tapping along under his desk.

  
  


_**France** _

Matthew had thought that his time fighting for President Lincoln had showed him what hell was, but he isn’t prepared for France. 

He isn’t ready for the burn of mustard gas or the grab of barbed wire. 

The screams of men and the screams of horses ring in his ears even as a horrible silence descends over No-Man’s Land.

He doesn’t want to go over the top, knowing the men in his unit will be mowed down by the enemy’s hail of machine-gun fire.

Hell isn't a world of heat and fire, hell is a muddy trench in a stagnant war.

The blood and mud soak into Matthew’s skin. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be clean again.

There are tents where no doctors go but the nurses write hundreds of letters a day. They are a necessary lie for some poor mother. The writing is light, saying he has a good pair of boots, the men in his unit are the best anyone could ask for, and that he is her loving son. Death sits quietly in these places, patiently. Here are the unconscious and the barely conscious, all without hope. 

The Army had notified Matthew upon the deaths of his parents some 30 years ago, and he’s thankful his mother was spared this horror. At least his things were returned to her. The mothers whose sons die here, so far away from home, are informed by telegram.

Like before, he’s kept sane caring for a horse. This one’s name is Emma and while she doesn’t have Billy’s sleek frame and shiny coat, her eyes are the same. She’s always pleased to see him, pushing her nose into his chest before shoving at his trousers like his pockets are filled with treats. Matthew doesn’t need sleep, and there’s little to be had in France, but he spends his quiet time caring for her. He keeps her feet as clean as possible in the muddy trenches, forages for any extra food, and brushes out her coat.

He keeps her safe, she keeps him sane, and maybe God hasn’t forsaken this place and all those who died so needlessly, because when Matthew disembarks in New York City, Emma is waiting for him.

_**Interwar** _

  
  


The next twenty years pass like minutes. Matthew spoils Emma for the rest of her days and returns to West Point to teach in 1921. 

Some of the curriculum has changed drastically since his own graduation but math hasn’t. He tries to base his lessons in practical application and has the most success when he combines hockey and geometry.

Hockey is even more popular now. In 1926, New York City gets a professional team, the New York Rangers, and pictures of the team plaster the dorm walls. He confiscates newspapers snuck in from the library to read during breakfast. Rounds through the dorms after curfew require extra vigilance on Saturday nights, as the cadets try to pick up the CBC’s “Hockey Night in Canada” broadcast on forbidden radios.

Matthew is reassigned to the Bank just before Christmas in 1929 to help them weather the flood of panicked customers afraid they will lose their life savings as banks across the country crash. 

President Hoover sends some placating telegrams and Matthew hopes the Bank will remain solvent. There is usually money for war in the budget and the Bank keeps the secrets of the Military’s payroll. 

He and his clerks breathe easier when President Roosevelt passes the Emergency Banking Act of 1933. 

Matthew falls in love. Her name is Olive and she has the reddest hair he’s ever seen. Her father owns the local pharmacy. 

He’s been in love before, with both men and women. He’s had passionate flings during peacetime and unsustainable relationships in wartime. His relationships have never lasted long, either by circumstance or choice. Sooner or later, someone will notice he doesn’t age. Matthew thinks this might be different, maybe she won’t care.

Their courtship is slow. He sits in her parents’ parlor, her mother in the corner with her knitting pretending she’s not listening, while Olive makes him laugh. She’s funny and clever and he likes to hear about her observations about the world. She’s going to school to be a nurse like her mother. She loves ice-skating.

1939 shatters all his hopes. Matthew has been watching events unfold across Europe and unease sits like a rock in his stomach. Everyday, there’s another letter from an old comrade wondering what will be the spark this time.

In August, his wait is over. He comes home one evening to find two uniformed men standing on his porch. They will be back in 36 hours to escort him to Washington. They tell him not to worry about the house or his things, the government will sell the house on his behalf and put its contents in storage until he comes home.

His goodbye to Olive is heartbreaking. She doesn’t believe him at first, but when he doesn’t smile back that disbelief turns to anger and tears. They cry together, he kisses her cheek and tells her not to wait for him.

Three days later, he’s in Washington where Assistant Secretary of War Louis Johnson briefs Matthew and others like him. They’re being sent north to join their Canadian counterparts in preparation for war. 

A week later, he’s greeted by a Colonel at the Ottawa train station and on September 10, 1939, Matthew Austin is again on a boat crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

  
  


_**England**_

A Spitfire is not a horse and caring for his plane doesn’t provide Matthew with the solace he had with Billy and Emma. 

He christens the plane “Annabelle” anyways and has one of the mechanics paint a bomb on her side after every successful mission. 

Matthew is rapidly promoted through the RAF, he’s a Group Captain by the time America officially joins the war in 1941. 

In September 1942, the RAF enrolls him at Oxford for classes in advanced mathematics before assigning him to No. 5 Group, No. 617 Squadron as a Navigator on a Lancaster bomber.

5 Group is made of men like Matthew, those cursed with unnaturally long lives, from across Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Bonds form slowly here and Matthew’s squadron-mates jeer him, Yanks were late to the last war and this one. They only quite down when he proves himself more than capable in his position. 

He also plays a decent game of chess. There are games set up all around the barracks, the names of the combatants written on a small card next to each board. 

He bonds with the Canadians first over hockey when he’s asked if he knows about the rivalry between West Point and the Royal Military College of Canada. By the time Matthew is triple-checking his preparation for Operation Chastise, he knows that 617 Squadron has his back.

In 1944, he receives a letter from Olive’s parents informing him of her death at Anzio. She had enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps and had written to him, proud to be doing her part for the war. There isn’t anything Matthew can say, only that he’s sorry for their loss. He returns the picture of a smiling Olive and her fellow nurses she had enclosed with one of her letters.

5 Group is disbanded on December 15, 1945, and Matthew feels empty. This was his third war and he’s tired. Tired of the signal to scramble, of watching planes drop, of listening to bombs drop. Tired of watching cities and factories and farmland burn. He’s tired of death. 

Matthew loves his country and proud that he stood up against Evil, but he has nothing left to give her.

  
  


_**Post-War Toronto**_

After the war, Matthew Austin accepts his Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Force Cross, for acts that he doesn’t consider brave or noteworthy, from a grateful King George VI and disappears. 

The storage locker holding the contents of his former New York house is quietly sold and the money goes to the National Naval Medical Center. His generous government pensions (one from the United States, a second from England) are forwarded to an Auston Matthews in Toronto, Ontario.

Before he leaves for Toronto, he makes the long journey to California to visit his family.

He finds his parents’ headstone first. They had 50 years together. 

After looking through the town records, he discovers that both his sisters married local men and is able to find their headstones. He finds it hard to think of his sisters as grown, married women with children. His older sister had been 15 when he left for New York, his younger sister only seven.

Near his parents’ is his own grave-marker:

Captain Matthew Austin 

September 17 1843 - May 6 1864

Cavalry Corp

Army of the Potomac

It looks lonely.

His new name is confusing at first but feels like a clean slate. He is free to build a new life. Auston chose Toronto because his Canadian friends from the war said it’s safe for people like them and the services for veterans are good.

For the first time in a long time Auston feels like he has a support system. People who understand what it feels like to watch those you love age away from you. Men, and a few women, who have fought and killed for their country over the centuries. 

Auston is 107 years old and one of the youngest in his little group. He also might be the least broken. Some of their group attempt to self-medicate with alcohol or other legal and illegal drugs, while others jump from one tragic or dysfunctional relationship to another (Auston still has hope that he’ll find someone.).

For lack of better options, Auston goes back to school and studies psychology, hoping to find something that explains his horrible dreams. He doesn’t know if he’ll find answers but he doesn’t want to end up like his friends who seem to be trapped in their memories with no means of escaping.

Like an old friend, hockey returns to his life and Auston loves it just as much now as he ever did. He was Turned at 20, some say frozen at his prime, and it gives him a strength and speed he could have only dreamed about growing up.

He and his friends play in backyard rinks and public rinks, usually in the middle of the day or late when other people aren’t around. They want to play as fast and hard as their bodies allow without worrying about hurting others.

Hockey is Auston’s escape, from his dreams and his search for understanding and from his small, too-quiet apartment; he grabs at it with both hands.

  
  
  


_**Present-day Toronto** _

At 173 years old, Auston Matthews is the undisputed king of Toronto hockey and the face of Clarence Campbell’s unexpectedly successful experiment, the Vampire Hockey League.

Auston remembers the afternoon he and his friends were approached by a conservatively-dressed man who handed over a business card, wanting to know if they would be interested in forming a league with other neighborhood groups. The compensation wouldn’t be much, just a sweater and the opportunity to really push their limits.

What had started out in 1950 as an experiment to see if a faster, even more physical game could exist next to the current one had exploded under Gary Bettman, with teams forming all across Canada and other countries. After a tense decade of growing pains as ownership and salary deals were worked out, Auston is an enviably rich man.

The city still loves the Leafs and even with two teams, there is still enough hockey to go around. Auston watches peripherally as the NHL gets smaller and faster. He couldn’t name anyone on the current or past rosters outside those who are much beloved; after awhile all the names and faces start to blend together.

He doesn’t pay attention to the rumblings heralding the return of an NHL princeling. Players come and go; some will be good but most won’t. He doesn’t give it any more thought until he has a promotional cross-league photo-shoot and meets Mitch Marner.

Mitch Marner, who looks like he would shatter if Auston slammed him against the boards. Whose eyes are a shade of blue that surely can’t be human. Maybe some unknown witch made him out of cream as a beautiful accessory for her house made of sweets.

He’s very, very young.

  
  


_**Toronto, Many Years in the Future** _

Mitch wraps an arm around Auston’s waist, cupping his cheek with the other. Auston’s eyelashes flutter and he pulls Mitch closer. Auston’s skin is cool and just as brown as the day he was turned over 300 years ago. Mitch likes the contrast with his own pale skin.

He’s 150 and Mitch still feels young. He’s starting to understand why Auston had turned him away all those years ago. Mitch had been 22, young and infatuated with Auston. Or with his idea of who Auston was.

He’d paid another vampire to turn him and then shown up at Auston’s door, promises he couldn’t have kept dropping from his lips. 

Auston had been sad and disappointed. Why had Mitch done such a reckless thing? He had a lucrative NHL career and a loving family.

Mitch had cried when Auston kissed his forehead, telling him to come back in 100 years, as he’d put Mitch in a cab. Sent him away.

His mom had been confused when Mitch confessed to his parents, but his father had been so, so angry. He had ranted and shouted but Mitch had turned and left. Paul Marner wasn’t in charge of his career anymore.

He wouldn’t speak to his parents for 40 years.

Kyle had helped him find a European club that was willing to sign him partway through the season and spent 75 years playing in Europe. The money wasn’t as good as the NHL but it’s more than enough.

Finding friends and lovers is nothing like it was before the change. Mitch is a vampire who plays hockey, and he’d had to learn who was interested in him and who wanted to bask in his influence.

He watched his brother age and his niece and nephew grow and have children and grandchildren of their own. It’s a sobering realization that Mitch moves through the world differently than the rest of his family. 

He loses touch after one of his great-grand nieces asks him to stop visiting because he makes the family uncomfortable.

When Mitch had returned to Toronto, Auston was on a 30-year Sabbatical. But when he had walked into the locker room 25 years later, the attraction was still there. 

It wasn’t love at first, though it is now, and they had been teammates, friends, and emotional-lovers for 10 years before they shared their first kiss.

They had shared endless cups of coffee, disappointing seasons, and late nights before Auston told him how old he really was.

Mitch sat in a therapist’s reception room every Tuesday afternoon for two years before Auston invited him in to tell him what he’d done. How many people he’d killed in service to his country. Mitch had wrapped his arms around heaving shoulders while Auston sobbed like a dam of pain had finally broken.

Their first kiss was in California when they had flown out so Auston could check on his family. The cemetery was rundown, just outside a dying settlement with a population less than 500. The headstones had been worn away to near illegibility but Auston spared no expense in replacing them. 

He had ignored the small, equally worn headstone next to his parents’, saying he wasn’t that man anymore. Matthew Austin had served one King and multiple presidents. He had fought in three wars. It was time for him to be forgotten.

Mitch had taken both of Auston’s hands in his, interlacing their fingers and pulling him close. The kiss hadn’t been novel-worthy or world-shaking, instead it had been soft and light.

It said “You are so precious to me”.

Auston is still precious to Mitch, even more now. In their waking hours they share love. In their sleeping hours, they share dreams.

Mitch doesn’t know what it means when they walk through their dreams together, Auston’s psychologist of 30 years thinks it’s a reflection of their dedication and trust, but it’s intimate and it feels right. He knows they’re stronger because of it (Auston still has nightmares about his life before. The night he was changed, the men he’s killed. The loss of his family. In those horrible moments, Mitch fights his instinct to allow the dream to flow around them, instead looking for a way to claw them free.).

Auston turns his face into Mitch’s palm and kissing it before gathering Mitch up in his arms and rolling them back and forth across the bed, Mitch kicking and shrieking with joy.

**Author's Note:**

> All mistakes are my own.


End file.
